Week 2: Glossary Definition
Community Standards
- Standards in the form of opinion, ideology, or values held by a certain community or society at any given time.
- Example: Ramage states that community standards greatly affect the way law is practiced in our country. Changes in the law are often motivated by changes outside of the law, he said. One of these changes outside of the law is community standards.
"The Supreme Court ruled that having the Ten Commandments displayed in a town's courthouse was unconstitutional, despite coming down on the opposite of that ruling ten years ago. It is suspected that such a decision reflects the change in community standards on that subject within society over those ten years." (example sentence not based on factual information)
-Source: Rhetoric, A User's Guide by John D. Ramage, pg. 22-23
(Jessica Allebach)


3/9/12 - Presentation Summary

I found what he had to say quite interesting - I hadn't thought about applying what we have been learning to film. He started off the presentation with an image from "Yes Man" to introduce us to the way both film and photographs are created to produce a certain reaction from the audience. The subject I found most interesting was that of "montage" and specifically the example of Montage used by Hitchcock in the video clip we viewed. The video jumps from a smiling, old man to a mother and a baby and this creates a meaning for the viewer (an old man smiling at a cute baby). When the video jumps from a smiling, old man to a young lady in a bikini, this creates an entirely different meaning for the viewer (a possibly perverted old man). I think this example explained quite clearly the purpose montage serves for meaning. He also used the example of scenes from cows being butchered interrupting war scenes. This montage creates a deeper meaning of the war being portrayed. I also particularly enjoyed him mentioning the point, so to speak, of all this rhetorical study. Most of us understand what films, commercials, and other visual material is trying to get us to feel, think, or do. We don't, however, understand how that feeling, thought, or action is produced. What elements of the commercials, film, or image creates individual reactions? Thinking about it in this way gives me a new insight into the importance of his entire discussion.